More exciting facts have emerged on the controversial building that collapsed in prophet Temitope Balogun Joshua led Synagogue Church of All Nations. Two international experts that came on behalf of the relatives of scores of the South Africans who were killed on Friday, September 12, 2014 have submitted their reports. And Sahara Weekly is privy to their final reports which are available to us.
According to Dr. Stephen Asheri Ntoga who is the head of the team of expert that did the findings, the construction met with international standard. And that they have ruled out the possibility of structural failure. In a chat with us he opened up on their findings.
“I am a civil engineer, a structural engineer and a material engineer expert. I also lecture in several universities around the world. I am also the Dean of faculty of Engineering in Tanzania. I studied and taught in Europe. I know the regulations of construction. Here, they use the so-called British standard in concrete structure. I know the code. What happened in this collapse building based on my investigation of the interaction between the foundation base and the soil has opened up so wide that even if the soil was of low strength, it would still have an excellent response. There was no suppression of the foundation. That’s why the foundation is healthy. The type of steel we discovered here is of the highest strength you can get in the world. The columns are more than six. Even the cross section of the steel is excellent. If you observe the steel from the foundation to this height, it means there was interconnection between the foundation and into the upper continuation of the column that joined the structure with the beams that were up there. This means that there were even more reinforcement than just the ones on sight. This kind of material that was used here is what we call stirrups pr rings. It’s a Y10 material. Y10 means that it is actually ten millimeters. The standard is six but they use ten. As regards these materials, the beam is an inter-connector between the foundation and the other one. This is an extra effort made by the company that built this structure.
Normally, this kind of thing can be put in a super sensitive foundation in terms of an area or zone that has high level of earthquake effects. I can also verify that the materials used in terms of aggregates. The aggregates are of different sizes. Precisely, because of this kind of diversification of the aggregates, it simply means there was an interweaving of these materials. The way it is compacted, it is super perfect.
The extent of the degree of effectiveness shows the excellence of the construction of the building. As an expert, I can tell you authoritatively that this kind of foundation could go beyond 12 stories. From my findings, I saw the picture of the building and observed the height between each of the floors. That makes it more resistant to failure. Our conclusion is that this structure had a perfect quality. This incident could only have been done as a preplanned arrangement of knowledgeable people like me.
Why? It’s because as civil engineers we are also taught how to demolish a building. There are methods that we are taught officially. One of such is that when you want to demolish a building like this, you ensure that the building fall within its own plot. In other words, it falls within its own foundation. It’s like making it kneel down just like that and very quickly because you strike artificially at where the material is brittle. That means where it is not ductile. It will crack suddenly without extension. Thus, my conclusion is that it’s not structural failure.
Corroborating his statement, the second expert from South Africa, Alpheus Mamafa who is equally a civil engineer said, “if you check the type of reinforcement used in standard construction, its six columns but here they used ten. They used ten which is the strongest reinforcement we can ever get in construction business. Structural failure starts from the foundation. Once there is a crack on the foundation, its structural failure because of the weight coming from above. But here, we found no crack on anything. It’s so strong. I don’t see any structural failure as regards the collapse building.
Sahara Weekly”s check with relatives of the victims revealed that the report has cleared the negative notion they might have nursed before against the prophet that the building fell due to structural failure. According to one of their spokesperson on Saturday, January 17, 2015, ‘we love the report we have heard from our own about the collapse building and will ensure we support him in finding the real cause of the demolition”
Meanwhile, we have confirmed that the actual number of victims in the unfortunate incident is 117 and we have the authentic list and actual names of the victims with us. According to one of the spokesperson from South Africa who narrated the last moment of the victims to us, “on Friday, September 12, 2014, we just finished receiving a lecture at the main auditorium. And the title was ‘uncommon blessing attracts uncommon challenges’. Everybody was present. We had a break around 12pm and some decided to go to the dinning to have lunch. They were seated and have been served food before the building came down within seconds like a slice of bread.”